10 Movies That Were Condemned On Religious Grounds

7. The Da Vinci Code

Another hugely successful book to make it to the big screen, The Da Vinci Code - with its pseudo-revisionist approach to religious iconography and symbolism - was always going to raise the heckles of the religious community if only on account of the controversial legacy of Dan Brown's source material. Tom Hanks plays professor Robert Langdon, who becomes the prime suspect in the murder of a museum curator and sets out to clear his name, mustering all his academic skills in the process and uncovering a quest for the Holy Grail - the true identity of which the story suggests has been part of a two thousand year cover-up by the Catholic Church. The film, despite its box office success, is a woefully muddled affair (in keeping with the trashy source material, some might argue), which, in the words of Tom Hanks himself is "loaded with all sorts of hooey and fun kind of scavenger hunt-type nonsense." Notwithstanding the fact that practically all involved in the production seem to agree that the plot is absurd, religious groups around the globe rallied round to roundly condemn the film as blasphemous, offensive and full of theological errors. Indeed, the Interfaith Coalition Against The Da Vinci Code was promptly established in which leaders of a number of American Christian groups lambasted the film, saying that it "glorifies hieros gamos a satanic ritual that reduces women to nothing more than objects in a male dominated sex ritual." A prominent Catholic priest added that Sony - who produced The Da Vinci Code - "seeks to profit off bigotry, proselytises paganism, and undermines the dignity of women." Meanwhile, some atheist movie fans criticised the film simply because it was a badly written, contrived waste of time in which the talent in front of and behind the camera was woefully underused - although it's highly doubtful that any of them called for it to be banned.